Seismic network and drilling start
Preparations for the injection site at Helguvík are in full swing. The drilling work has started, and the seismic network is now in place.
In Helguvík, a community northeast of Keflavik Airport (Iceland), drilling operations have begun. Drilling is currently underway for the monitoring borehole to be used to investigate the mineralization of the CO2 with geochemical methods. The drilling for the nearby injection borehole will start soon after the completion of the first well. Later, the CO2 from Switzerland dissolved in salt water will be injected into the basaltic subsurface via this borehole.
Once the drilling is completed, the injection equipment will be installed in a container directly at the end of the injection borehole. The injection of the CO2 is expected to start at the end of the year. Supply bottlenecks due to the COVID pandemic and the conflict in Ukraine led to delays, which delayed the originally planned earlier start of drilling.
Parallel to the drilling work, a team from the Swiss Seismological Service at ETH Zurich has set up a seismic network consisting of five measuring stations. These are placed within a radius of 300 meters around the planned location of the injection well to measure changes in the subsurface that could potentially occur in connection with the injection of the CO2-saltwater mixture in the subsurface.
The injection site is located in an industrial area, so that no noise pollution or other adverse effects can occur for the population of the neighboring municipalities of Suðurnesjabær and Reykjanesbær.
